Comments on: Beyond Fantasies & Licenses

By: Ulf

Ulf — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 03:30:31 +0000

Although I am a big fan of dark historic settings, I always wondered why the WW2 era setting seems to be underrepresented in MMOs, especially since it seems to meet the 4 criteria you introduced in the article pretty good. But then again, it makes sense if the target audience is “adult women”. If you can’t put Tom Hanks and Matt Damon into the MMO, it will probably fail to attract a lot of attention from the key audience – that’s at least my prediction, based on the gender distribution I see in the usual (WW2) FPS games, or even in (WW2) tabletop wargaming.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts, I think I gathered some insight from the article.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:04:32 +0000

Very insightful.

As you say, the goal isn’t total originality. I could come up with a game idea where the players are sentient atoms, pursuing various goals to combine and conquer to create molecules and incorporating the latest quantum physics but it would be a complete headache for most people to try to play.

Recently I’ve been playing my MMO while chatting to a friend who is playing the latest Total War. The contrast in game design between a historical simulation and a MMO is quite astounding. For instance his game “learned” from him playing the British that landing in France and burning territory is a shrewer move than trying to hold it so now his client’s AI does that when he’s not playing the British.

Can you imagine WoW if Onyxia reacted to player tactics and adapted her behaviour to counter the way most people beat her? It would certainly get raiders thinking rather than learning Bosskillers.com strategies.

I strongly suspect (having read your equally outstanding blog post on historical perspectives) that big MMOs will start looking to what other games have done before. Sid Meier for instance solved many of the problems that modern designers seem stumped by.

Let’s hope for some creative recycling not only of genres but also of game mechanics in the future.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:31:34 +0000

I’ve written about wanting a good Steampunk game before. Curiously, I almost always manage to tie in Battletech. The “giant robot” genre is represented by Project of Planets and a few other titles, but nothing really significantly successful. That’s a bit of a surprise for me, especially considering the potential in a BT title. (Or a Gundam title, or a Heavy Gear title, or an Armored Core title…)

Now, mix steampunk with mechs (like the tabletop Warmachine), and you could craft an original IP with enough familiar elements to be accessible.

By: Nenad Ristic

Nenad Ristic — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:00:17 +0000

A brilliant article, I ODed on fantasy over a decade ago (even before MMORPGs appeared), and I would dearly love to see something new. I really think that Steampunk is another genre that could offer a great possibility of revitalising the hobby (you mention it in the introduction, but do not do a more in-depth analysis of it)